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Cross country rally, by its definition, is one of the most unpredictable disciplines, where a day-to-day management of both, rider and machine, goes hand to hand with the possibility of chances. It is the law of the rally, a little unexpected can cost you a lot, as it happened to Lopez in the third stage, where a trivial problem related to an electric cable pushed the victory away.

But the Chilean is a real fighter and today he wanted to demonstrate that there, right behind the winner Mar Coma, he had a place. He started seventh this morning, and went for a high paced race, perfectly supported by his Aprilia RXV 4.5, with an increasingly slim gap from the 690cc bikes.

Already at CP1 Lopez scored the second fastest time, keeping it until CP3. In the final section of the stage, Chaleco used all the power of his Aprilia and stayed ahead only with Coma to wrest the stage victory for almost one minute.

The stage ended by a huge hug between the four-times winner of the race with his main rival, as it declared yesterday the Spaniard champion regarding Lopez.

Francisco Lopez: "We wanted this stage victory to lift a bit the moral. I have shown that I can fight for the victory against more powerful bikes. Today, in the last section I pushed hard and managed to get a minute from Coma. The bike goes well, but now we need to work immediately to solve some small problems to make it even more competitive. On the other hand, these races are important for us to test the development and the main objective for Aprilia remains the Dakar 2011."